Project Ara dev board ships later this month

Kits don't use phone form factor, are enough for hardware devs to get started.

Google is almost ready to ship dev kits for Project Ara, the modular smartphone concept from the company's ATAP division, to hardware developers. Google hopes the modular smartphone concept will someday allow users to replace and upgrade hardware components about as easily as you can swap out a removable battery. An entire ecosystem of innovative boutique smartphone hardware manufacturers could result from Ara, providing a change from the handful of large companies that control the market today. Making this system a reality is a massive challenge, but it seems that Google is making progress and is now taking requests for the developer boards, with a plan to ship later this month.

No one outside of Google has ever actually seen Project Ara work. The closest we've come was at Google I/O last month, where a prototype device was able to show the Android boot screen and half of the lock screen before crashing. The developer boards aren't in a smartphone form factor, though—they look to be about the size of a small PC motherboard and are only meant for hardware development and testing.

Enlarge/ What one of the Ara dev kit boards actually looks like. It isn't quite as compact as the concept.

One of the developer boards is pictured above, but there are actually three separate pieces of hardware. One is the application processor board (basically smartphone guts), which runs the horrifically old (and no longer supported) TI OMAP 4460, the same processor that's in the Galaxy Nexus and Google Glass. Since this is "the smartphone part," it will need to run software, which Google only identifies as "modified Linaro Android." Ara needs to run on a fork of Android that supports things like hot-swapping hardware components and additional drivers for the hardware ecosystem. We're going to guess this is the board pictured above, which is quite a bit bigger than the final concept, but it's good enough for testing.

Further Reading

New "Project Ara" details show how it works, but that's just half the battle.

The second board is "a UniPro switch board representative of the network switching functionality of the Ara endoskeleton." Ara modules communicate with one another through the skeleton, and it's this board's job to help developers replicate that communication. "UniPro" is the protocol that the modules use to communicate. The last board is for "developer-unique functionality" that supports tunneling various I/O protocols over Ara's UniPro (if you're interested, the page lists "legacy DSI, I2C, I2S, SDIO, and GPIO").

This is just the first release of the hardware, and Google said that it plans to have a second hardware release with multiple application processors in the fall. Getting away from the Texas Instruments chip would be a good idea since the company is no longer in the SoC market and no longer supports its devices with updates.

Google doesn't mention any kind of cost for the boards (free?), and, unlike most Google-branded hardware, Ara seems to be open to most of the world. The signup sheet only says that Google can't ship to "Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria" and that shipping is subject to US export law. If you're a hardware developer, you can request to get the board here. Google says it will "prioritize requests based on technical experience and the strength of your module concept."

The first round of applications is due July 17, 2014, 11:59pm PDT, so if you're interested, you'd better start filling out the paperwork. Boards ship later this month to selected applicants.

Suddenly realized something that now seems obvious: Google wants smartphones to be like PCs were in the early 1980s, because they're in the same relative position Microsoft was in at that time.

And more importantly, they can see that other device manufacturers are in the position that other computer manufacturers were then, selling rigid software+static hardware bundles. Remember the fall of IBM?

In other 'devkit shipping soon' news, Oculus Rift DK2s should start being dispatched this week.

'Modular' is a phase that, historically, every system goes through in its engineering evolution. But it usually fails-- the difficulty is that any functionality that specialized low volume modular parts can deliver will eventually be replaced by software running on a cpu. The price/performance/engineering economics just doesn't work.

'Modular' is a phase that, historically, every system goes through in its engineering evolution. But it usually fails-- the difficulty is that any functionality that specialized low volume modular parts can deliver will eventually be replaced by software running on a cpu. The price/performance/engineering economics just doesn't work.

Suddenly realized something that now seems obvious: Google wants smartphones to be like PCs were in the early 1980s, because they're in the same relative position Microsoft was in at that time.

The key difference is that tight integration, weight, volume, build quality and power efficiency were never anywhere near as important to desktop PCs as they are to mobile phones.

Not to mention that modularity in desktop PCs appears to be declining as a valued trait—see the rise of laptops and small form factor PCs (although there are examples of both that offer some level of upgradability, it's an exception rather than a rule).

As a result, while the geek in me thinks it's awesome Google is putting some research muscle behind this, I really doubt it will ever see the light of day as a readily available product.The "benefits" don't apply to a large enough audience to be commercially viable.

'Modular' is a phase that, historically, every system goes through in its engineering evolution. But it usually fails-- the difficulty is that any functionality that specialized low volume modular parts can deliver will eventually be replaced by software running on a cpu. The price/performance/engineering economics just doesn't work.

Computers seem to be the exception to that, and people have realized smartphones are just small computers. Though, it never did great in laptops, so it may fail (though many laptops still have some replaceable modular parts, e.g. optical drives, hard drives, memory). Personally, it's something I know I want, and I hope enough people want it to keep the project alive.

Not to mention that modularity in desktop PCs appears to be declining as a valued trait—see the rise of laptops and small form factor PCs

Note that the 'decline in desktop PCs' is a decline in the rate of buying new desktop PCs, not a decline in install base. Note also that the 'throw the old one out, buy a new one' cycle for phones and tablets is a lot shorter than for a desktop PC.

When I read about this project, at first I was exited. I could get exactly the kind of phone I wanted.

Except I couldn't. This will add to the size of phone, and as size is one of the dealbrakers, I wouldn't get the kind of phone I want. It would end up too big.

That's one part of this that has never bothered me, as long as I can fit it in my pocket I'm happy (which is why I have a Galaxy Note 3). Luckily, the success of the Note line and other large phones has shown there are certainly people willing to give up that aspect.

Of course for those like you, I imagine a smaller form factor will be available after a couple generations.

Suddenly realized something that now seems obvious: Google wants smartphones to be like PCs were in the early 1980s, because they're in the same relative position Microsoft was in at that time.

The key difference is that tight integration, weight, volume, build quality and power efficiency were never anywhere near as important to desktop PCs as they are to mobile phones.

Not to mention that modularity in desktop PCs appears to be declining as a valued trait—see the rise of laptops and small form factor PCs (although there are examples of both that offer some level of upgradability, it's an exception rather than a rule).

As a result, while the geek in me thinks it's awesome Google is putting some research muscle behind this, I really doubt it will ever see the light of day as a readily available product.The "benefits" don't apply to a large enough audience to be commercially viable.

I can see Google releasing Project Ara kits even if it is not a big money maker. - The reason would be the tech enthusiast mindshare.The techie tinkerer audience while small, is very vocal on internet tech sites. (People who build their own PCs are the prime example of that.)Having knowledgable people who enthusiastically support a platform/company is a positive.

When I read about this project, at first I was exited. I could get exactly the kind of phone I wanted.

Except I couldn't. This will add to the size of phone, and as size is one of the dealbrakers, I wouldn't get the kind of phone I want. It would end up too big.

That's one part of this that has never bothered me, as long as I can fit it in my pocket I'm happy (which is why I have a Galaxy Note 3). Luckily, the success of the Note line and other large phones has shown there are certainly people willing to give up that aspect.

Of course for those like you, I imagine a smaller form factor will be available after a couple generations.

Other articles have detailed 3 different sizes for the endoskeleton and screens.

'Modular' is a phase that, historically, every system goes through in its engineering evolution. But it usually fails-- the difficulty is that any functionality that specialized low volume modular parts can deliver will eventually be replaced by software running on a cpu. The price/performance/engineering economics just doesn't work.

Exactly. Don't know why you're getting modded down for saying so either. A modern smartphone's a processor, screen, camera, connectivity, battery. Input, output, and a bit in the middle to make the bits go round. All the real value is in the integration of these components and efficient production, allowing vendors to deliver X capacity for Y cost at Z size and weight. X*Y*Z = Total Value. The Ara approach simply cannot provide the same value, or even close: at best, choose two out of three.

There might be the odd vertical market that would find very specific uses for it, where fabbing one completely custom hardware component and buying the rest off the shelf at the Ara premium would still work out more cost effective than fabbing the whole thing. And there'll be some geeks who'll buy it just because of the cachet value within their social circle. But for the 99.9% of phone users for whom the smartphone is just one more tool, this has no relevance at all, because they'll always be able to find an off-the-shelf solution that delivers more than enough power and size to serve their needs and still doest it at a much lower cost. That's what having mind-bogglingly vast, efficient manufacturing systems at your full disposal do.

OTOH... if folks round here were to start talking about fully modularizing and automating the entire fabrication pipeline itself, allowing any customer to submit the specs one week and have the whole thing designed, assembled, and delivered the next, then now you're talking. You'll still pay a price premium, of course: it's a bespoke/luxury product after all, so you'll pay extra just for privilege even if parts and production cost the same. But with the groundwork laid, you'll have a system that can deliver one bespoke phone at a price point 20% under an Ara, or 100 of the same for 20% less than that, or even 10,000 for not a vast amount more over an off-the-shelf handset.

None of which is a remotely original or inventive idea, mind: you just have to look at the incredibly evolution of the 2D print industry over the last 50 years. If I had a time machine to go tell my old gran and grandad, then young printmakers in love, what their entire industry would look like by the time when I was their age too, they would never have believed me. "Ultra low-cost, small-to-mid volume bespoke four-to-six-color globe-spanning print on demand? Without presses?? Without plates???? Witchcraft!!!!!!

There's a way to go yet, but small-scale industrial 3D fabrication has been getting more automated, flexible, and efficient for at least a couple decades now, so who knows how long it might be till you can fab some size-and-weight mockups on your cheese-string-jet home printer, and once you're happy with the heft and hold of it, push the "Print Online" button and have it zip off into the ether to return as a real, working product a few days later at very reasonable cost to your credit card, just as you can do with your family snaps and amusing cat photos today.

This will be about as good as it gets I'm guessing. This is an utterly useless distraction/PR exercise by Google.

I have to agree.... The simple fact is that the inside of mobiles is now very cramped. The mainboard and chips are reduced in size and number as much as possible. The rest of the space is battery and the structural integrity is improved by big glass covers and metal surrounds. This is going to be a significant step backwards.

Only Google can really make this work and only Google has the ability to start so many cool projects and then drop them..... Nexus is on its way to extinction at some point soon. Although we all want this to work so we can mess about, swap modules and install our own OS. It is never going to be something the main manufacturers will like and networks will agree with so without a Google or contract subsidy it will fail.

I really like the idea, I think it will live on and have a future in whatever as yet uninvented device comes along and makes the next leap which smartphones have. Wearable tech, Google glass type devices, tablets smartphones and always on cellular connection are all going to come together at some point. The lessons learned and protocols devised through this will help with a modular approach to doing that rather than the current duplication of technology we have now carrying around redundant components.

'Modular' is a phase that, historically, every system goes through in its engineering evolution. But it usually fails-- the difficulty is that any functionality that specialized low volume modular parts can deliver will eventually be replaced by software running on a cpu. The price/performance/engineering economics just doesn't work.

Exactly. Don't know why you're getting modded down for saying so either. A modern smartphone's a processor, screen, camera, connectivity, battery. Input, output, and a bit in the middle to make the bits go round. All the real value is in the integration of these components and efficient production, allowing vendors to deliver X capacity for Y cost at Z size and weight. X*Y*Z = Total Value. The Ara approach simply cannot provide the same value, or even close: at best, choose two out of three.

There might be the odd vertical market that would find very specific uses for it, where fabbing one completely custom hardware component and buying the rest off the shelf at the Ara premium would still work out more cost effective than fabbing the whole thing. And there'll be some geeks who'll buy it just because of the cachet value within their social circle. But for the 99.9% of phone users for whom the smartphone is just one more tool, this has no relevance at all, because they'll always be able to find an off-the-shelf solution that delivers more than enough power and size to serve their needs and still doest it at a much lower cost. That's what having mind-bogglingly vast, efficient manufacturing systems at your full disposal do.

OTOH... if folks round here were to start talking about fully modularizing and automating the entire fabrication pipeline itself, allowing any customer to submit the specs one week and have the whole thing designed, assembled, and delivered the next, then now you're talking. You'll still pay a price premium, of course: it's a bespoke/luxury product after all, so you'll pay extra just for privilege even if parts and production cost the same. But with the groundwork laid, you'll have a system that can deliver one bespoke phone at a price point 20% under an Ara, or 100 of the same for 20% less than that, or even 10,000 for not a vast amount more over an off-the-shelf handset.

Well, there are some advantages to modularity in terms of reducing the number of configurations. For a manufacturer of non-modular phones, there's always a matter of tradeoffs. We could put a better camera in it, but it would add $20 to the cost. We could make two versions of the phone with and without slide-out keyboard, but if we do that with every model, we end up with twice as many models. As a consumer, it gets frustrating because there's never a phone with quite the features you want. If you want a physical keyboard, your options become very limited.

If there were just a few standard frame/screen sizes (maybe 4.2", 4.7", 5.0"), you wouldn't need a physical keyboard version of every possible phone model, you just need a physical keyboard that can attach to the three standard frame sizes. Since the way modules snap together would be standardized and documented, you wouldn't even need the phone manufacturer to make the keyboards, other companies like Logitech, etc could make them, or they could make slide-out gamepads for people who like to use their phones as portable gaming systems. Users could get the phone of their choice with the keyboard of their choice (or none if they like onscreen keyboards).

The real advantage is that it adds opportunity for innovation. Right now, if someone has a neat idea for some completely new feature for a phone that requires custom hardware, they're basically out of luck unless they work for one of the major phone manufacturers, or have the ridiculous piles of money necessary to start their own phone manufacturer that can compete with Samsung, etc (not likely).

If a modular phone like Ara is available, they can just start their own company to build the module that will work with existing phones, rather than having to build and market a whole phone from the ground up. It might be some kind of niche feature at first. Maybe eventually it would get popular enough that the typical integrated phone manufacturers will start including that feature in pre-made phones. The point is that it opens up possibilities for innovation to a much wider range of people.

You never know where the next good idea will come from, and the current phone industry has a fairly small number of gatekeepers deciding which ideas to include or not. I view this as a serious problem in the industry, and project Ara is a potential way to mitigate it.

Dont know why you are getting downvoted, I hate that without someone adding to the thread. You make some good points especially about Samsung who are about the only company that can afford to throw multiple models onto the market and see what works. I think like me you are the target market which is small and full of wishfull thinking individuals.

'Modular' is a phase that, historically, every system goes through in its engineering evolution. But it usually fails-- the difficulty is that any functionality that specialized low volume modular parts can deliver will eventually be replaced by software running on a cpu. The price/performance/engineering economics just doesn't work.

There is still an important point closely related to this, which is that distinct hardware components have over time become more integrated, not less integrated. On a PC or early phone you might have had a Wifi component, a Bluetooth component, and a GPS component. In a phone today, all three of those transmitter/receivers may be a single component.

PC users are used to thinking in terms of CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. But many phones use System On a Chip (SOC) where all that stuff is a single integrated component, which increases flexibility and performance in a number of ways.

It will be interesting to see how much traction Project Ara actually gets. The public loves small devices because regular people are about the task, not about the tech. And they don't want the tech to get in the way. This has been a major driver behind Apple's success. Maybe some techies would be able to use Project Ara to build a phone or tablet with a uncommonly high-end CPU, GPU, specialized sensors, and a battery big enough to drive it all for more than 20 minutes...but it's going to be a lot like the guy who builds the most awesome PC tower ever seen but which impresses no one because it's too big and heavy to be used outside of the basement it's in.

Overall I have to throw my sympathy behind the "Modularity is a nice idea but historically it fails" posts that are getting downvoted unfairly.

On a PC or early phone you might have had a Wifi component, a Bluetooth component, and a GPS component. In a phone today, all three of those transmitter/receivers may be a single component.

There is still a lot of back-and-forth over integration vs. separate chips. Baseband in the SoC! Baseband on its own (so you can change markets without changing SoCs)! Add dedicated low-power cores for background tasks! No, take them out the SoC for processing motion and other data! No, put them back in! Integrate WiFi and the data MODEM! Seperate the WiFi and the MODEM (but keep WiFi and Bluetooth integrated)! Add NFC support somewhere! Add NFC support EVERYWHERE (let's stick it in the SIM, that's a fantastic idea)! Not to mention integration-on-die vs integration-in-package.

There's way more wiggle room than it appears on what is integrated where.

If so many people are so happy with their existing smartphones then why are there so many accessories to expand functionality? Lets take iPhone for example. One of the biggest selling points of the iPhone is consistency. Yet there is an entire industry devoted to adding or enhancing the iPhone via accessories.

Enough people to support multiple manufactures in each category. There is general tendency in tech blogs to underestimate the general public. This often comes from personal, frustratingly painful experience of having to give tech help to someone who should not be allowed to be near anything that runs on electricity let alone use anything more advanced than a light switch (yes I have been through it). This is however just anecdotal.

Let me pose this to you. Most of us here would generally do not buy our computer parts at Best Buy because we know other places to get our parts cheaper. Exceptions like having gift cards or some other discounts or needing to make an emergency repair as fast as possible and it being the nearest place with parts are a given. Best Buy has racks of retail boxed computer parts. So if the tech savvy are generally not buying those retail parts then who is? General consumers. It does not matter if they install it themselves or have somebody else do it. What matters is that enough general consumers feel the need to buy computer parts to repair or upgrade their computers that Best Buy keeps shelves of retail parts stocked for them.

I believe these factors could translate into viable sales for Project Ara devices.

On a PC or early phone you might have had a Wifi component, a Bluetooth component, and a GPS component. In a phone today, all three of those transmitter/receivers may be a single component.

There is still a lot of back-and-forth over integration vs. separate chips. Baseband in the SoC! Baseband on its own (so you can change markets without changing SoCs)! Add dedicated low-power cores for background tasks! No, take them out the SoC for processing motion and other data! No, put them back in! Integrate WiFi and the data MODEM! Seperate the WiFi and the MODEM (but keep WiFi and Bluetooth integrated)! Add NFC support somewhere! Add NFC support EVERYWHERE (let's stick it in the SIM, that's a fantastic idea)! Not to mention integration-on-die vs integration-in-package.

There's way more wiggle room than it appears on what is integrated where.

The likes of Qualcomm are always integrating as much as possible but as things take many months / years to develop just adding a relativley new feauture to the existing SoC isn't always possible due to die size and pinout. If you make your own chips and can put the baseband in the soc you would do because it is cheaper, takes up less space / power and involves less development time for the phone. Then of course you have stupid USA carriers with their conflicting standards and you run into issues where Apple and Samsung have to use external baseband occasionally in certain markets to make it economical. I dont think anyone actually wants to de-integrate features from the SoC.

If so many people are so happy with their existing smartphones then why are there so many accessories to expand functionality? Lets take iPhone for example. One of the biggest selling points of the iPhone is consistency. Yet there is an entire industry devoted to adding or enhancing the iPhone via accessories.

Such as:

...

Looks like consumers do not have that much of a problem with modularity when its easy and external.

Developing an accessory costs far less that developing a smart phone. Especially for far east manufacturers who churn out and re-use these accessory designs all day. The reason there are so many for the iPhone is simply because it is a massive market of compatible devices to advertise to.

If you want to add a feature to a phone you need to make sure it will bring enough sales to make up for the profit lost by including it in every phone. If it's not essential and doesn't bring sales it gets left out. All those things are non essential items which few users would want including so it would be a waste of profit.

Ron Amadeo / Ron is the Reviews Editor at Ars Technica, where he specializes in Android OS and Google products. He is always on the hunt for a new gadget and loves to rip things apart to see how they work.